Based on George Eliot's novel, Middlemarch is set in early nineteenth century England and charts the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the town as it divides its population into two opposing factions: the conservatives and the liberals.

It is into this state of upheaval that the young, ambitious Doctor Lydgate takes his position at Middlemarch's new hospital. His wish is ''to do good small work for Middlemarch and great work for the world.'' Elsewhere in the town, Dorothea Brooke, seeking purpose in her life, finds herself drawn to the elderly but scholarly Edward Casaubon. Soon both young people find their idealism tested by the demands of marriage and society.